Rule Forty Two: The Self-Aggrandizing Website of Gavin Edwards

Chapter 13: Say My Name, Say My Name (Rock ‘n’ Roll Nomenclature)

Starting a band is work. Not as much work as mowing lawns, admittedly, but learning to play an instrument well enough that you can recruit some friends or strangers to join you? Work. Finding a place to rehearse, and then later, having the audacity to charge people to listen to you? Work. (Maybe that’s why Throwing Muses, in their early days, gave a dollar to anyone who came to one of their shows.) But coming up with a name for your band? That’s the fun part—which is why thousands of bands have never made it out of the name-creation and logo-design stage. (The logo-design laboratory is often the back cover of a school notebook.) My nonexistent band in eighth grade? Graven Images (without any “the” before the name—I was going through a major Talking Heads phase.)